From the month of May, ultimately from Maia, Roman goddess of growth and spring.
May is one of the simplest and most luminous names in English, but its roots branch in several directions. Most obviously, it comes from the month of May, named in Latin tradition for Maia, a goddess associated with growth and spring. As a given name, May has also functioned as a form of Mae or a pet name for Mary, Margaret, and Mabel.
That layered history gives it a lovely doubleness: it is both a seasonal name full of blossom and sunlight, and a familiar nickname shaped by long domestic use. In literature and popular culture, May often appears as a figure of youth, sweetness, or renewal. The month itself has been celebrated in poetry, song, and folklore for centuries, with May Day festivities, garlands, and spring rites giving the name a festive old-European atmosphere.
As a personal name, it has been borne by actresses, writers, and public figures, including the American actress Mae West in variant spelling, whose glamorous persona gave the sound a very different sort of cultural force. Usage has shifted over time. May was especially familiar in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when short floral and virtue-adjacent names flourished.
Later it was sometimes seen as quaint or grandmotherly, but it has returned as part of the revival of concise vintage names. Today May feels fresh again: gentle, bright, and quietly literary. Few names carry so much spring in a single syllable, and few manage to feel at once antique, natural, and effortlessly modern.